Award winners! (left to right) Janet Bell - Museum and Access Advisor - Pam Barton - Office Manager - Peter Saunders - Director - and Liz Tillett - Head of the Disability Unit at the Department of Work and Pensions.

Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum has been given an Access All Areas award in recognition of staff efforts to make the institution more accessible for disabled visitors.

Run by the Department for Work and Pensions, the awards are aimed at encouraging businesses to meet their obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act.

At an award ceremony held last week at Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, museum staff were presented with an award in the Entertainment and Leisure category.

"We’re delighted," museum Director, Peter Saunders told the 24 Hour Museum. "It’s recognition of the hard work we’ve done."

However, he explained that while entering really encouraged the team to transform the museum, the improvements won’t stop now: "Although we have won the award," he added, "we are going to keep it up."

The museum is housed in a Grade I listed building, making it difficult to provide full access to upper floors. © Peter Langdown.

Under the Disability Discrimination Act all public service providers, be they small businesses, large businesses or cultural institutions, must make their service more accessible to disabled people.

On October 1 this year the obligation was extended to require service providers to take reasonable steps to tackle physical features of their premises, which might act as barriers to accessibility.

A clear problem for Salisbury Museum was how to offer total access to the displays when much of them are laid out on its upper floors.

As a Grade I listed building, staff were unable to put in a lift to allow those with limited mobility the chance to see all of its collection.

So, in order to accommodate everyone, members of staff and volunteers set about creating virtual tours of the collection, photographing individual objects and writing detailed descriptions.

Staff at the museum have used handling sessions and interactive digital images of some of the objects in the collection. © Peter Langdown.

Object handling sessions with museum experts also enable blind and visually impaired visitors to appreciate some of the many fascinating items it has on show.

Under the title Upstairs Downstairs, the project allows visitors to experience much of the collections displayed on the upper levels without having to leave the ground floor.

According to Peter Saunders, the museum approached the improvements in a very holistic way.

"We looked at it from the point of view of disabled people," he said, "and have tried to cover more than just the obvious things."

It wasn’t just about installing ramps, he explained, but about making a visit to the museum a positive experience for disabled visitors.

The museum has now been given a grant by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport/ Wolfson Foundation fund to continue its accessibility improvements. © Peter Langdown.

As such, before any physical improvements were made, all staff, volunteers and trustees were given disability awareness training.

The result, said Peter, is a better museum for all visitors not just those with disabilities: "It’s actually not only improved things for disabled visitors, but for everybody" he said.

As well as Salisbury Museum, a fish and chip shop in Pembrokeshire and a caravan park in Lancashire were among the winners.

"The Access All Areas awards aim to champion small businesses for their innovation and commitment to improve access for disabled customers," explained the Minister for Disabled People, Maria Eagle.

"This year’s winners have fought strong competition and introduced creative solutions to accessibility. They have shown that a little bit of common sense, creativity and investment can go a long way, no matter what the size of the organisation."